Life has been busy and definitely not been as crafty as I had hoped. Mostly, the new job has me channeling my creative juices in other directions at the moment. Not to say that I haven't crafted - I had to finish a couple of gifts, but the Etsy shop is still not open. The dop kits for father's day aren't finished. Thankfully, my wonderful husband says as long as open by the end of the year, he'll be happy. So I feel a little bit less pressurized to open.
Recently my creative juices have been in overdrive at work. I am still settling into the new job - nearly two months in now. I am seeing what I need to make the desk easier for me to navigate; how to organize my days and my desk for optimized efficiency. The biggest draws on my creativity have been two events that I had to coordinate this month.
The first was the 3rd Annual Day of Remembing, where my office and two other offices host a memorial service for any patients who have passed away at our hospital in the past year. When I first heard about the event, I wasn't sure what to expect, but after experiencing this one, I am even more in love with my job. We provided a safe space for the patients' families and friends to gather and remember their loved one who have died. There was lots of crying, a little bit of laughter, and a whole lot of love and support. It sounds odd, but I came away from the service feeling renewed and a little giddy. I was so happy to have helped to create this beautiful, safe space for families. And I was touched by the gratitude from the families to the doctors and staff at the hospital.
The second event was our 2011 Awards Ceremony, where my office selects individuals, clinicians or staff at the hospital, who have shown outstanding patient care. We have official titles for these awards, like Champion of Innovative Spirit or something, but at its core, it's to celebrate outstanding efforts by staff and medical professionals to provide the best, most caring service to our patients. Again, I was renewed and energized by the luncheon and learned of a new quality improvement model called Assertive Inquiry, which focuses on the positive rather than what's wrong, and saw in action. We gave the award to a supervisor, and in turn that supervisor recognized that the wonderful feeling he got from receiving the award should be felt by his staff. So now that supervisor is contemplating his own awards for his staff.
Both of these events were 50% planned by time I started my job, so there wasn't a whole lot of decision making needed. However, the creativity came in different ways. For the Day of Remembing, I started even before the event officially started, on a list of things I would do differently - pick a different caterer, arrange things slightly differently if possible, add a list of names to be read in the program, etc. This year I took the left over programs, inserted a pretty list of the names of patients we read at the program (whose families who weren't able to attend, or who didn't want to speak) and composed a letter describing the service and will be sending out to the families who requested a name to be read. For the Awards Ceremony, I realized my predecessor was not really into a lot of design and next year I will be finding better ways to create the awards. First purchase, I think will be a circle cutter to make much nicer circles and hopefully other additions.
While life was settling into a routine the last time a posted, I've since realized that I need more structure to my routine: split the breakfast and lunch making duties, schedule the chores. Otherwise, I won't participate in these important but tedious activities. So we are in the works of implementing a schedule and part of that schedule will be a night that I can devote to my sewing machine. Which isn't to say I can't craft other days of the week. No, I hope to do some crocheting and maybe even try my hand at knitting again on other nights and other projects that I can do at home, in front of the TV.
So plans for an Etsy store are still in the works and I am finding new outlets for my creativity. Once we're on a schedule, life at home will be less hectic as well.
Happy crafting to all.
